Monday, April 02, 2007

FDA Wants to Change MOCKOLATE into CHOCOLATE

I'm hoping the food blogging community can help me mobilize the public on an pending issue with the FDA on the standards for chocolate.

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association has proposed a major shift in the acceptable definition of chocolate. They want to allow products made with cocoa solids but NOT cocoa butter to be classified as and labeled as chocolate. We all know that this stuff is NOT chocolate. See this page for a full breakdown of the new acceptable formulas.

The FDA has an open comment period on the new proposal which ends on April 25, 2007. You can fill out a simple web form to enter your comments, send a letter or fax. Get all the info here at the website DontMessWithOurChocolate.com.

The Don't Mess with Our Chocoalte website was set up and hosted by Guittard. Pam Williams at EcoleChocolat.com is also helping to get the word out.

I've created a bunch of images too, I'm hoping that folks will want to display them on their sites, perhaps in your sidebars for the month (linking to the DontMessWithOurChocolate.com site) to get our readers off their duffs to protect our chocolate. (Or make your own graphics too!)

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I'm also going to be running a series of posts on my site and probably running a drawing for a package for real chocolate for folks who file their comments with the FDA. If anyone else has any ideas about how to get the word out, I'd love to hear them. I know a lot of us belong to forums as well (Chow.com, FoodCandy, C&Z etc.) that might be able to get the word out and leave their comments with the FDA.

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